Life and liberty are not the gift of society, state or Constitution
but inalienable rights of every individual. The flame of liberty will
glow so long as there are persons who have guts, grit, and vision
to expose and disprove those nibbling away liberty in the name of
expedients.

A journalist of a well-known
television channel recently asked me why the community to which I
belong (of human rights activists) always takes stands which are opposed
to the stand of the whole nation. Can the shrill voices of the electronic
media replace our whole being? Can they replace the Indian Constitution
and the rule of law? The strong judgements passed by the media after
every terror attack, every encounter and every arrest of a ‘mastermind’,
can sway the middle classes and the executives working in the multinational
companies. But can they stop a nation from questioning?

Even at
the height of Hitler’s rule in Germany, when benches on the
roadside had signs saying, ‘Not for Jews’, someone had
the guts to put a black cross on them, establishing that such politics
of genocide was not acceptable.

Though
India is being transformed at a fast pace where all minorities are
being forced to realise that they are second-class citizens, the difference
is that there are many more people in India who are challenging the
fascist agenda of those who are in power and others, who are desperately
trying to capture power in the coming election.

The ascent
of these forces has been systematic and well planned. Twenty years
ago, most of the secular forces believed that the communal fascist
forces were on the fringe of society and laughed at the possibility
of their ever moving centerstage. Today the situation has reversed
— the communal forces are so centrestage, it is difficult to
differentiate between what is right and what is centre. They have
invaded all spaces and areas including the minds of our secular politicians.

Among the
plenty of weapons that they have used in this journey — from
the peripheral to the Centre — fake encounters occupy a fairly
important position. They have cleverly used different weapons at different
stages. Beginning from ordinary bhajan mandalis, they moved to more
organised kathas, to new age gurus. Working at different levels over
15 years — shishu mandirs, shakhas, ekal vidyalayas, sant samagams,
television serials, the rath yatras, leaflets, videos, CDs —
they have slowly entered the consciousness of an entire society with
targeted messages against minorities. Only those sections of society
who strongly and consciously contested this ideology could retain
their sanity. After the seeds of hatred were sowed successfully and
the harvest was being reaped, started the more decisive phase —
the physical attacks and largescale genocide. Most of the experiments
were done in Gujarat and the remote areas of other states. For example,
the experiment within the tribal belts started in the late 1960s and
early 1970s.Almost simultaneously, the VHP swamis then moved into
these areas.

Today,
we have reached a stage when an innocent person can be killed in a
fake encounter, and declared a terrorist. A large number of innocent
young Muslim boys are being victimised by the police on charges of
terrorism. In most cases, they are not shown to be arrested by the
police until many days after their arrest in gross violation of the
law. Their families are also not informed about their arrest and while
in police custody, they are made to ‘confess’ and sign
blank papers. The courts routinely deny them bail. When the police
chargesheet them, the trials go on almost endlessly during which the
poor victims are virtually defenceless. GUJCOC, MCOCA, POTA and many
other such draconian laws are required only so that the statements
which the police force out of the victims can be considered as evidence.

After years
of torture and confinement, when the case against the victims is found
to be baseless, no action is taken to hold police officials accountable.
The young patriotic journalists, of course, are then not around to
report the horrors of all those years lost in the dark cells of a
jail. Stopping the victimisation of the innocents will be the first
step towards finding a solution against terrorism.